Spatial Data Infrastructures (World Best Practice) Are Caused by State and Private Sector Collaboration with Shared Responsibilities

SUMMARY The work of building "Spatial Data Infrastructure" (SDI) is in progress all over the world. There are many challenges: governance, organisational, technical, data sharing, transitional and more. These systems need to establish and evolve and over time. Therefore an understanding of what they lead to and how they currently are is critical. Too often this knowledge departs with individuals or lies in thousands of documents and files. State and private sector organisations share the mandate and the roles. An understanding of the boundaries, and how those boundaries manifest, is critical to allowing change. There are existing best practices emerging in how to establish industry frameworks. If we focus on SDI as an industry we can leverage off this best practice. This also addresses recognised issues associated with the implementation of complex information systems by government. World best practice in creating effective, self-sustaining modern land administration needs to be available and usable. To enable this we suggest that a framework is used to capture the knowledge in a semantically precise way. To allow specific local implementations (reflecting local needs and practice) to be supported and to allow decisions to be made based on the framework (capturing best practice).